


Planetbound (beta)

by TheBookwormBakery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Language Barrier, Major Character Injury, jade plays doctor and is highly unqualified, karkat fights a dog, mostly just hurt, not quite violence yet but some serious injury, not very comforting actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 19:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18453134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookwormBakery/pseuds/TheBookwormBakery
Summary: A spaceship falls from the sky to crash on a remote island, and the lives of two groups of children are changed forever.





	Planetbound (beta)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is like. Old stuff. 2016-2017 writing. As usual I found it hard to focus on to actually keep writing and then I fell into other hyperfixations before being able to write out all the plot I had in my head. I'm mostly just posting on impulse for the 4/13 occasion and maybe thinking about it will make me start writing it again and I can post this as a real fic instead of just like, a pilot-ish thing to show off the sorta-disconnected ideas.
> 
> (I'm still working on Hand in Hand I promise I just wrote a bunch of the next chapter last night)
> 
> Happy homestuck day everyone

It’s late enough now that if Jade attended school, or had a curfew of any kind, she would definitely be up past her bedtime. Or at least, she’s pretty sure three in the morning is extremely late for a typical teenager; it was Dave who told her that, and sometimes he just makes things up about American teens. Regardless, out here the only schedule she keeps is her own, which is why she’s sitting on a haphazardly built wooden platform high above the trees of her island, at the top of her tower. Her laptop and a partially opened cardboard box sit on the old quilt next to her: all the equipment she needs to finally study the unidentified moving lights that stand out against the stars.

She stares up at them, squinting. Red, gold, green, blue; eleven of them, every color of the rainbow. And then one lone gray light, almost lost against the dark sky. A soft chime from her laptop draws her attention back to the open Pesterchum window.

TG: harley cmon dont leave us hanging  
TG: im just dying to know what the photon said to the bellhop  
TG: im on the edge of my seat here holdin my breath  
TG: a few more minutes away from death  
TG: bring on the punch line im ready to go  
TG: tell us the answer we all wanna know  
TT: Dave, perhaps you could wait longer than two seconds for Jade to reply.  
TG: nah you know me rose  
TG: things to be cool at  
TG: people to be cool to  
TG: deliriously sick beats to hospitalize  
TG: and oh so little time to do it all  
TT: You must be so terribly busy.  
GT: seriously guys, just shut up and let jade get a word in!  
GG: the amount that dave talks is ridiculous :I  
GG: anyway, the photon says to the bellhop: "no, im traveling light!" :P  
TG: amazing  
TG: im sure thats the ending absolutely no one saw coming  
TG: truly a masterpiece of scientific comedy  
GG: you were the one badgering me about the punch line!!  
GG: jeeeeeeeeeez!  
GG: also i got distracted by those weird lights ive been seeing in the sky for the past few weeks  
TG: how come i havent seen any of these ufos  
GG: because the light pollution in houston is so bad you can barely even see the moon :/  
TG: hey now ill have you know that sometimes i can see a star  
TG: on really clear nights TG: during blackouts  
GG: exactly  
GT: so have you confirmed that they're aliens yet?  
GG: no john, theres no evidence that the lights are aliens  
GT: maybe the men in black wiped your memory!  
TT: If that was indeed the case, Jade would be showing signs of a memory wipe.  
TT: So far she has shown none of them.  
GG: ha!!!  
GG: im gonna go look through my telescope, brb

Jade starts unpacking the component pieces of the telescope Dave sent her, laying them out carefully on the observation platform. The volcano is still higher than her, but she can’t really do much about that unless she wants to start making the trek up to the peak and use _that_ for a platform. At least she doesn’t need to see beyond it right now.

“Grandpa?” she asks out loud.

The reply comes from the speakers on her laptop. “Yes, my dear?”

“Can you play some music for me? Those old jazz albums you have.”

“Of course, my dear.”

Eclectic jazz music begins playing from her laptop, and she hums along as she fiddles with the components of her telescope. Finally the pieces lock in place and she punches the air victoriously.

“Grandpa, transcribe for me?” she asks, peering into the eyepiece and looking for her lights. Time to find out what they really are.

“Ready.”

Jade clears her throat, channeling her best Scientist Voice. “This is my first aided observation of the UFOs which first appeared in the night sky near the constellation Cancer on the night of October 25, and which have ignored celestial and artificial satellite movements for the past two weeks, instead moving erratically.” She frowns. “While I am reluctant to assume these could be extra-terrestrials, this seems to be the only remaining answer.”

She finally finds the lights with her telescope. They’re blurs, moving far faster than any orbiting satellite. “Erratic movements of UFOs confirmed with telescope. Focusing now.” She takes an educated guess at the proper focusing power for the telescope to pick up the lights in better detail. The gray one - it’s kind of become her favorite, she likes that it’s hard to see and consciously seeks it out every night - comes into view at just the right distance and she gasps. “I see it! It’s there, I see it! I-” Jade clears her throat. Scientist mode. “UFO sighted through telescope. It’s… It’s a spaceship? It’s a spaceship!” Screw scientist mode, this is amazing! “It’s actually aliens, John was right!” Other ships come into view as well, revealing that they, too, are also spaceships. Suddenly each light becomes a bright red, and she pulls the focus back a bit. “The identified ships have changed their individual colors to red, and appear to be forming some kind of formation, possibly defensive. Though what they are defending from is unclear…”

That’s when something shoots out from behind the moon and hits one of the ships - maybe the formerly-gray one? She thinks she sees what looks like a small explosion, and the ship appears to stop moving. “Something has - oh no, I think one of them’s been attacked by something? The aliens have laser technology, this is so cool!” As she watches, a fiery envelope wraps around the ship. “We have entry into the atmosphere - is it - Grandpa, can you track the trajectory?”

The voice from Jade’s computer clears his throat. “It appears to be heading right for us. On its current course, the ship should strike at the northern base of the volcano.”

“Stop transcription! Music off!” Jade abandons her telescope and opens her chat window back up. As the music stops she hears an explosion, and a flash of orange light fills the corner of her vision.

TG: look all im saying is that your taste in movies leaves something to be desired  
GT: it does not! all of the movies i watch are awesome, and i will tolerate no more of this slander.  
GG: GUYS!!!!!  
GG: THE LIGHTS *ARE* SPACESHIPS!!!!  
TT: What?  
TG: holy shit john was right for once  
GT: i was?  
GG: you were!!  
GT: i was!  
GT: oh man, aliens are real! this is awesome!  
GG: but one of them crashed!!! D:  
GT: jade, you have to go find it! then you can save the alien’s life and befriend it and maybe it will help you save earth from the other invading aliens!  
TT: If I may interject.  
TT: Jade, how many spaceships were there?|  
GG: well, there were twelve that id been seeing for a while  
GG: and they all had different colors! but then they all switched to red  
GG: and with my telescope I could see something shooting at them from behind the moon!!!  
GG: and then one of them fell into the atmosphere and crashed on my island!!!!  
TG: dude this is some sci-fi movie shit  
TG: john which one is this  
EB: i’d have to go with race to witch mountain, personally.  
TG: is that the one with the rock and the batshit terminator ripoff  
EB: yeah.  
GG: or it could be bad aliens who want to eat my face off :/  
EB: yeah, but only in the really bad sci-fi movies that are really sexist and stuff.  
GG: if i was in one of those id be glad to let the alien kill me! XI  
TT: I hope you don’t mind if I take notes on this.  
GG: rose!!!!! :(  
GG: i should probably go check out that ship now  
GG: maybe i can salvage some cool parts!  
GT: and also rescue the alien.  
GG: sure, and also rescue the alien *rolls eyes*

Jade slams the laptop shut and looks out over the island. From her platform she can see the crater and ring of fire from the ship’s impact. Luckily everything is still wet from a recent storm, but… Maybe bringing a fire extinguisher wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

She clambers down from the platform, back through the window into her room. Jade drops the laptop on her desk and begins grabbing anything useful she can think of, shoving it into a backpack. Then it’s down to the ground floor using the transportalizers, where she grabs the largest transport cart she can find and a portable stretcher, just in case. She piles on a first-aid kit, fire extinguisher, and her rifle, and whistles for Becquerel.

The giant white dog comes bounding through a doorway, dancing around Jade eagerly. “Ready for a walk, boy?” she asks, and Bec barks before sprinting for the front door. She pushes the cart after him and starts the long trek through the jungle.

The trip passes quickly, with Jade’s mind on the crashed ship. What could have downed it in one hit like that, and why was it hiding behind the moon? If the ship did have a pilot, were they okay? Or is she too late, and the pilot already dead?

The smell of thick smoke hits her nose, making her cough. Jade lets go of the cart and picks up the fire extinguisher. The crash perimeter is small enough that it doesn’t take long to put out the worst of the fire, and she manages to get Bec to kick dirt over the last embers. He’s a smart boy, and Jade makes a mental note to give him the steak she’d been saving for him.

With the fires out, all that’s left is to investigate the crashed ship itself. Jade lifts her rifle off of the cart, leaving it at the top of the crater. It should hopefully be fine up there; she can come back and get it once she’s determined there are no hostiles on the ship.

She finds a hole in the hull big enough to climb through, and it hits her like a jab to the solar plexus that this must be from the laser thingy. The interior of the ship feels almost humid, though her footsteps echo on cold metal. Pulsing crimson lights illuminate the walls with a dull glow, almost like the emergency lights on airplanes. She pause, waiting to see if they move; the lights move sluggishly inward, almost like a circulatory system. There’s also a myriad of beeps, apparently coming from wherever the dull lights are leading. The whole ship feels visceral, feral. Alive.

The ship is also on fire, so she brings out the fire extinguisher and makes her way through the flames. The smoke is slow to dissipate - attempting to press forward too quickly sends her into coughing fits - but gradually she moves through the ship, following the pulsing lights. The beeps drill into her ears as she reaches what appears to be the cockpit. Wires are sparking, tubes are oozing, and the red light pulses faster. She picks her way through the debris in the cockpit, hardly daring to breathe. Rather than reassure her, the apparent lack of life just sets her more on edge.

Jade’s foot touches something soft. Soft, but far too solid to be the goo oozing around everywhere. She forces down a scream when she realizes she’s looking at an arm. A lifeless, very human-looking arm, reaching out of a debris pile.

She pokes it cautiously with the barrel of her rifle, and it remains motionless. Feeling braver, she starts shifting the debris off of the alien she can only assume was - is - the pilot. The sound of movement from behind her makes her jump; Bec has followed her in, and is now slouching in the doorway with his tail between his legs.

She looks down at the partially uncovered pilot for a second, before racing out of the ship and pulling the cart down into the crater. It takes some shoving to get the cart into the ship, and she’s pretty sure she made the hole bigger, but now it’ll probably be easier to get in and out.

Jade unfolds the stretcher and sets it down before finishing digging the pilot out. If she had to guess, she’d say the pilot is male, a couple inches shorter than her, possibly around the same age. The biggest physical difference she can see is the pair of small, rounded horns on his head. He’s absolutely covered in blood and burns, and she honestly has no idea where to start. She switches on a flashlight and whistles Bec over, putting the light into his mouth and telling him to stay _very still_.

She wets a towel and begins wiping up blood, uncovering multiple deep wounds that quickly begin undoing all of her cleaning work. Moving quickly, she retrieves gauze and medical tape and begins wrapping as tightly as she can. There’s not much she can do about the burns here; stopping most of the blood flow will have to do for now.

She grunts as she maneuvers him onto the stretcher, surprised at how heavy he is for his size. Maybe his species or whatever is just more dense than humans. She straps him onto the stretcher and jury-rigs a sort of harness for Bec. Once she’s made sure everything is securely attached and the pilot isn’t going to fall out, she points back toward where she entered the ship. “Bec, haul. _Gently_.”

The dog very carefully begins walking in the direction Jade pointed, dragging the stretcher along behind him. Jade piles as much technology-looking scrap as she can onto her cart before following him out. After helping Bec make his way out of the crater, she pulls the cart up with considerably more effort. Things keep falling off, so once she gets the cart to the top she has to run back down and pick up all the little pieces. Finally she sets off back through the trees, resigning herself to the fact that she’ll definitely have to make at least three more trips to get as much as she can out of the wreck.

The sun has risen by the time she makes it back home, and as soon as she detaches Bec from the stretcher he finds the nearest dog bed and passes out. Ugh, if only she had that luxury. She might as well have done an ultra marathon, considering how tired she feels.

Jade decides on the kitchen as a temporary infirmary for her new… guest? Captive? She settles for “patient,” considering the conditions she found him in. It’s honestly surprising he wasn’t crushed or something. Whatever he is, he’s resilient.

Looking at the alien in better light, she realizes that what she thought was an unhealthy pallor in the dim red lights is actually slate-gray skin. It looks rougher and tougher than human skin, and his hair, too, seems thicker and more coarse than human hair. His ears are longer than a human’s would be, tapering into a soft point, and they seemed to be twitching. There are what looks like a row of thin scars on his sides, too smooth and evenly spaced to be from any kind of accident. Were they ritualistic?

And that’s not even going into general anatomy - she can tell now just from looking at him lying on the stretcher that something about his proportions is _off_. His arms look too long, his torso too short. She shakes her head to clear out the cobwebs, and presses her ear and hand to the alien’s chest. It rises and falls smoothly under her hand, and she can hear what’s probably his heart beating steadily.

Jade closes her eyes, and when she opens them, the sun is high in the sky. The alien’s heartbeat seems louder now, which she can only hope is a good sign. He’s still asleep, and she can see small frown lines across his forehead. It occurs to her that despite the surface similarities, the alien’s physiology could be totally different from her own. As much as she’d like to run tests to find out, she’s not exactly trained for that; she also doesn’t want to do something so invasive without consent.

She feels slightly more awake after her unintentional nap, so she takes another look at her patient. He’s wearing some kind of skintight wetsuit-ish thing, probably whatever his species wears to fly spaceships. She had kind of torn it in order to get the bandages on, and she feels kind of bad about that, but it was already covered in blood and ripped up from the crash. Not exactly an easy fix.

It’s been long enough that his blood has started to show through the bandages, so she changes them and spends a few minutes debating whether to give him a hemostatic agent. She’s pretty sure there’s a few in the first aid kit, but the issue is whether it’ll even work. For all she knows, the chemicals could be incompatible with his biology and worsen his condition. If she doesn’t, though, he’ll just bleed out.

It shouldn’t be a problem to get a blood sample and do a quick check for platelets; she has a centrifuge and a microscope somewhere. Definitely not in the kitchen, though. She finds the equipment in the lab, and carries it back into the kitchen. She fills a tube with the alien’s blood and sticks it into the centrifuge. While it separates, she runs upstairs to retrieve her laptop and brings it back down. Ignoring the blinking Pesterchum window for the moment, she opens up her browser and pulls up the Wikipedia page for blood centrifuging. If the alien’s blood has any platelets for clotting, they’ll be in a thin light-colored layer between the plasma and red blood cells: the buffy coat.

The centrifuge’s whirring stops, and she pulls out the tube and holds it up to the light. A clear layer of plasma, the red of blood cells, and… she squints. A thin yellowish brown liquid between them! She grins happily, then frowns. Maybe this would be easier if she compared with her own blood, because she has no idea how this measures up to the pictures.

She grabs a knife and presses it into her palm until it breaks the skin, and lets her blood drip into a second tube. She wraps a bandage around it and centrifuges her blood, tapping her fingers on the counter impatiently. She looks over at the alien. He hasn’t moved once in all her running around. When the centrifuge stops again, she pulls out her blood sample and compares the two. They _look_ pretty similar with the naked eye, but this is a literal alien she’s dealing with. Time to check with the microscope.

She carefully squeezes the buffy coats into pipets and sets the rest of the samples aside. She squeezes a couple drops onto a pair of slides and powers on her microscope. While she waits she adds a drop of dye to the samples and watches it spread through the liquid. She slides her own sample under first and studies the dark purple spots floating around. Unless she did something wrong, those should be the platelets. She slides the alien’s sample under next, and it looks pretty close to identical. There’s other small spots floating with the platelets, difficult to see because the dye didn’t attach to them, but hopefully they won’t interfere with the hemostat.

Reasonably confident that she won’t be committing malpractice, Jade finds the packages of hemostatic powder in the bottom of the first aid kit and undoes the alien’s bandages. She tears the packages open and sprinkles the powder over the wounds. When it looks like she’s covered them evenly, she replaces the bandages.

With that out of the way, she moves on to the burns. Most of them are pretty minor, but some are definitely second-degree. She digs out a bunch of towels and tubs, filling the tubs with cool water and soaking the towels. She submerges his arms in the tubs and rests the towels on the burns she can’t submerge. Wait, she’s supposed to elevate burned limbs. She rummages around some more until she has a decent stack of things to rest the tub on.

Well, it’s messy, but it’ll have to do. Satisfied that her patient isn’t on the verge of death, Jade finally opens up Pesterchum. Yikes… hundreds of messages from her friends! She skims through most of it and catches up to them in the middle of another argument about movies.

GG: again you guys? really??  
GT: jade!  
TG: oh sup  
TG: you disappeared for like a century  
TT: Nine hours.  
TG: a century rose  
GT: because he juuuuust can not live without jade in his life. the hours drag on into centuries without her by his side. :B  
GG: lol!!  
TG: yeah exactly  
TG: anyway howd alienquest go  
TT: Yes, I’m rather curious as to how that turned out. You were gone for quite a while, even if it wasn’t a century as Strider insists.  
GG: well…  
GG: lets just say i have a temporary houseguest now  
TT: !  
TG: holy shit  
GT: whoa!  
GT: you rescued the alien?  
GG: yup! hes sleeping right now and his injuries are pretty serious but hes alive and hopefully not still dying  
GT: looks like me being right isn’t a thing that is going to stop happening any time soon, dave.  
TG: congratulations do you want a nobel prize or something  
TT: He?  
GG: i guess so yeah  
GG: he looks almost human except for some superficial differences  
GT: really?  
TT: What kind of superficial differences?  
GG: thick gray skin, short little horns on his head, and some seeeeriously sharp nails  
GG: theyre almost like talons!  
GG: and his ears are pointy like in those lord of the rings movies  
GG: his proportions are weird though its like his arms and legs got stretched and the rest of his body got squished!  
TG: damn if you werent the one telling me this id be looking for cameras  
TG: waiting for ashton kutcher to jump out and say ive just been punkd  
TG: shit is so far fetched its like it came from space  
TT: Considering Jade is talking about an alien, I’d say “shit” literally did come from space.  
GT: has he woken up at all?  
GG: not as far as i can tell  
GG: i fell asleep on him earlier by accident and even that didnt wake him… i hope hes not actually dying and i just cant tell :(  
TG: whoa you fell asleep on him?  
TG: jesus fuck at least take him out to dinner first harley  
GG: dave stop!!!!!! i actually am worried about him!!!!!!!!!  
GG: i dont know what shot at his ship but whatever it is is dangerous  
GT: maybe if he wakes up he will know what it was. and then you can take it down together and usher in an era of intergalactic peace!  
TT: That’s quite optimistic.  
TG: sounds like a lame movie  
TG: one starring like  
TG: nic cage  
TG: or some other shitty actor  
GT: he is not shitty dave!  
TG: directed by m night shyamadouche  
TG: and then theres a shitty twist like  
TG: your passed out alien is the actual bad guy and the dudes who shot him down were trying to save the day  
TG: and now you have to take him down  
TG: except hes spent months getting to know you and humanity and he knows all of our weaknesses  
TT: Dave, you made your point at the first line.  
TG: and yeah you might win in the end but at what cost harley  
TG: at what cost  
GG: :/  
TG: anyway yeah im done now  
TT: Your dedication to beating a dead horse is admirable, but I have to agree with John.  
TT: It seems we are on the verge of something bigger than ourselves, than our entire planet. Possibly even our entire galaxy.  
GG: :O  
GT: wow rose, you made it sound way cooler than i did.  
TT: What can I say? I have a way with words.  
TG: so whats the plan with the alien now  
TG: i doubt the whole crash thing went unnoticed  
GT: oh, yeah! i bet people like the cia and nasa are collectively losing their shit right now.  
GT: i mean, actual ufos entering the atmosphere? now they really will have to brief the president on aliens like conspiracy theorists think they do.  
GG: oh noooo...  
GG: if they were watching then they must have figured out where the ship landed right?  
GG: they could be on their way right now!!!!!  
TT: That is somewhat worrying. If John’s movie logic holds true, government agencies aren’t likely to be too considerate of teenage girls living on what is now a highly classified alien crash site.  
GG: id like to see them try and take me out!  
GG: im a harley and we dont go down quietly >:[  
TG: no dude just play dumb  
TG: odds are the men in black just want the ship and theyll wanna wipe your memory and let you get on with your merry life  
TG: or probably call cps because who would possibly let a lone teenage girl and her dog just live alone on an island  
TG: oh hey maybe theyll decide not to scrub your brain and theyll adopt you and raise you to be a kickass alien hunter  
GG: :O  
GG: sooo cooool!!! :D  
TT: You said you wanted to salvage some of the alien ship’s technology?  
GG: yeah! i bet its super cool and futuristic and awesome  
GG: i still need to make a few more trips to pick up everything that might be useful  
GT: i wonder if his species has lightsabers.  
GT: if they have lightsabers can you save one for me?  
GG: of course! ill get lightsabers for all of us, because lightsabers are cool and not at all super dangerous  
TG: you carry around a rifle like its a toy harley you cant talk about dangerous  
GG: gun safety dave!!! its rarely ever loaded obviously  
TT: Your best bet would be to strip the ship of as much as you can. With luck, your alien may wake up in time to help you determine what’s important and hide that. Then he will need to hide somewhere these potentially imminent government agents won’t find him until they leave. If they end up taking the remains of the ship, at least you got away with most of the parts. If not, then you still have a ship to possibly repair.  
TG: okay but when it is loaded youre still out killing shit with it right  
GG: well yeah, bec is a carnivore and i eat meat too  
GG: and i cant live on just airdrops from the mainland  
GG: that sounds like a great plan rose!!!  
GG: i think ill get on that once i eat and check on him again  
TG: hey heres a thought  
TG: maybe true loves kiss will wake him up  
GG: ewwwwww  
GG: hes half dead and unconscious and also an alien!!!!  
TG: yeah im just teasin  
TG: keep us updated doctor jade  
GG: will do! <3

Jade closes her laptop and looks up at the sleeping alien. Her heart jumps into her throat as his arm twitches, but it settles again and he shows no further signs of stirring. Taking care of an alien sure is stressful.

The refrigerator is, thankfully, full of easy food that she doesn’t have to prepare. She munches on a string cheese and stares at her patient. His sleeping seems to be less of a coma and more like he’s actually just asleep. She’ll take that as good sign.

She pauses on her way out with the supply cart. Maybe… Maybe she’ll take two this time. She’s pretty sure they’re meant to be linked together.

With supply carts in tow, she whistles for Bec and sets off once again into the jungle.

* * *

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ghostyTrickster [GT]

TG: okay so you know how i said i discovered something weird earlier  
GT: yeah. you said, and i quote:  
GT: TG: yo john this is some scooby doo shit right here  
GT: TG: the amount of meddling i am doing is off the fucking charts  
GT: TG: rip off the monsters face and surprise its a mask and under the mask is the sweet little old librarian whos pissed because kids dont wanna read books anymore  
GT: TG: so she decided to be a d list monster  
GT: like, what does that even mean?  
GT: and then jade came online and you refused to talk about it even though we weren’t in the group channel.  
TG: it means  
TG: dammit you just had to quote me im laughing at my own shitty rambling  
TG: anyway  
TG: it means jades island doesnt officially exist  
GT: wait, what?  
TG: it exists like she lives on it and talks to us from there  
TG: but its not on any maps i could find  
GT: probably because it’s pretty small and also she is the only person that lives on it besides her grandpa?  
TG: thats the other thing about this  
TG: im not sure she even lives with her grandpa at this point  
GT: ?????  
TG: okay so like  
TG: we were planning on sending her something actually physical for christmas right  
TG: so i started looking into where her island actually is  
TG: and the weird shit keeps piling up dude  
TG: its not on any maps like i said and theres only one plane that ever regularly flies over that area  
TG: the only reason i know the area is my bro helped me track her ip address  
GT: holy shit you went to a lot of effort for this.  
TG: listen i dont fuck around with christmas on the line  
TG: anyway shes on some remote tropical island because of course she is  
TG: and then i started looking into her grandpa  
GT: because that is what you do when you stalk one of your friends.  
TG: its not stalking its research  
TG: she said hes an adventurer but at best thats not a job and at worst its slang for a lesbian  
TG: i doubt her grandpas a lesbian but maybe hes gay i dont know  
TG: or WAS  
GT: what’s so interesting about her grandpa then?  
GT: aside from your implication that he only exists in the past tense.  
TG: one hes fuckin loaded  
GT: i could have guessed that from the fact that he has his own island.  
TG: two hes loaded enough that he can afford to travel around the world for months at a time  
GT: sounds like a typical rich old dude thing.  
TG: and three  
TG: this is the kicker you might want to sit down  
GT: sitting.  
TG: hes been missing for the past seven years  
GT: … so jade has been alone that whole time?  
GT: wait if they have both been on a remote island how do you even track their missing or not missing status?  
TG: dudes basically a celebrity among rich people  
TG: founder of something called skaianet which is like astrophysics plus the internet or something i dont know didnt seem important so i didnt look too far into it  
TG: he makes appearances every so often and talks with his immediate subordinates on what i assume is a semiregular basis  
TG: or he did i guess before he disappeared  
TG: also yeah jades been alone for like seven years  
TG: she probably knows somethings up and probably knows more than i do  
TG: just yknow doesnt want to talk about her only living relative being awol and leaving her with just a dog to talk to  
TG: damn no wonder shes so kooky  
TG: seven whole years without another person physically there to talk to  
TG: maybe thats why she latched onto the alien  
GT: okay so her grandpa’s missing. that sucks but i don’t really see how that qualifies as “scooby doo shit.”  
TG: wow you pick now of all times to be skeptical  
GT: it’s sad but there is not much we can really do about it?  
TG: theres something else though  
GT: /raises eyebrow quizzically.  
TG: i remember around the time jades grandpa would have gone missing  
TG: maybe a little earlier  
TG: my bro was working on some big project  
TG: some kind of ai or something  
GT: an ai?  
TG: yeah he spent like forever on it  
TG: i ended up only eating at school for a week because he was so focused he forgot to buy groceries sometimes  
GT: holy shit.  
TG: he gave the thing kind of like an old man voice which i thought was weird at the time  
TG: but i kind of connected everything because this seemed like something skaianet would be interested in  
TG: the ai not the old man voice  
TG: and jade talks about her grandpa like hes still around but only in the context of electronics stuff  
GT: so you think jade’s grandpa commissioned your brother to make an ai of him because… he knew he would go missing?  
TG: bingo  
GT: how would he even know he was going to go missing? unless...  
GT: you think it was foul play?  
TG: that or he suddenly didnt love his granddaughter  
TG: which i dont think could ever happen  
TG: like spend five minutes talking to jade and shes the best person youve ever known  
TG: no way anyone randomly stops caring about her  
TG: besides he probably had the ai made so shed have some kind of human voice around to keep her company and he wouldnt do that if he didnt care anymore  
GT: even if he had stopped caring about jade, which you have proven is impossible, wouldn’t he still be doing stuff with skaianet though?  
TG: which is why i think someone had it out for him  
TG: maybe it has something to do with skaianet i dont know  
TG: like i said i didnt look much into it  
TG: but now maybe i will  
GT: you said something like astrophysics. do you think skaianet would be interested in the alien ships?  
TG: oh my god youre right  
TG: i mean either that or its an evil internet ai  
TG: because skynet sounds like skaianet  
TG: get it  
GT: yes i get it dave. hilarious.  
GT: if skaianet are the ones who end up investigating jade’s island though maybe she will be okay! her grandpa founded it so they probably won’t do anything to hurt her.  
TG: if skaianets not the reason her grandpa went missing  
GT: dun dun duuuuuunnnnnnnn. :B  
TG: precisely  
GT: even then i think she can handle herself. it sounded like she was going to work with rose’s plan.  
TG: yeah im not too worried  
GT: bullshit, you are super worried.  
TG: im allowed to be worried about my friend john  
GT: yeah.  
GT: i’m worried too.

* * *

Jade is seriously starting to regret piling as much onto the cart as she did. She hasn’t even started up the slope to her house yet, and she’s already soaked in sweat. She glares at the offending pile of alien technology and gives it a gentle, but angry kick. Bec takes that as a sign that he should start playing with the cart, too, and Jade has to shoo him away. “Bec, _no._ Go play, boy.” Becquerel streaks off into the jungle, and soon Jade can hear him barking at the wildlife. With a sigh, she starts pushing and dragging the cart up the hill.

By the time she reaches the top, she feels like she’s taken a bath. But she’s at the top of the hill, and that’s a victory. She pushes open the door and stops halfway through, when she hears something fall over in the kitchen.

Leaving the cart, she grabs her rifle and moves as quietly as she can toward the kitchen. If another animal got in here again and was going through her food, or worse, started messing with her patient…

She only just sees what looks like the contents of her pantry, as well as bits of the alien technology she’d left in here, scattered across the floor before something lands on her back and she goes into full Brawl Mode. She drops her rifle and flings her elbow back, only for whatever is on top of her to grab her arm and hold it there with what feels like sharp talons. She feels something even sharper dig into her arm, and throws herself backward into the wall.

The impact knocks her assailant loose, and she flips them over her shoulder across the kitchen. She dives across the floor and scoops up her rifle, aiming it at… the alien.

He stares down the barrel of the rifle, eyes wide. They’re yellow where human eyes would be white, and way too big, and the irises are gray around the edges with bright scarlet radiating from the pupil. They shift rapidly back and forth from her rifle to her face.

She realizes she’s still pointing the rifle at the alien, so she lowers it slowly to the floor, keeping her gaze trained on him. His rapid, shallow breathing slows as she seats herself cross-legged on the floor across from him.

He looks at her arm - those eyes are a _really_ bright red - and she follows his gaze. She can see a line of thin scratches from where he had grabbed her, and further along her arm blood is dripping from a row of bite marks. Jade makes a mental note to see if she can find out how his bite strength compares to a human’s later.

Jade looks up and the alien is back to staring at her face. His eyes have somehow gotten even wider, and she frowns at him, wondering what he’s thinking.

She starts to stand up so she can go and bandage her arm, and he scrambles to the side, putting himself between her and the table, where she’s been piling the salvage from his ship. Watching him move is bizarre, he’s got to have some joints humans don’t because seeing him settle into a clearly defensive posture sends chills up Jade’s spine.

He growls out a shaky “Mine.”

“Yours?” she asks tentatively.

He points behind him at the table. “Mine,” he repeats.

“Yeah, that’s yours,” Jade says slowly, not sure how much he’ll understand. Had he been studying human languages? For how long? “I’ve been getting it all out of your ship.”

“Ship,” he says, and he nods like he recognizes the word. “Where.”

“It’s still where you crashed, out in the jungle,” she tells him. “You shouldn’t go there right now though, you still look pretty injured.”

She takes a step forward, because he looks like he’s swaying on his feet, and his shoulders shoot up toward his ears as he hunches in on himself and yells, “No, _mine!_ ”

Jade holds up her hands reassuringly. “Whoa, hey, don’t worry, I’m not going to take your stuff. But you need to rest. Reeeeest,” she says, exaggerating the word. She points toward the stretcher for good measure, and he seems to get the idea, though he doesn’t look too happy about it. He steps away from the table, watching her in case she moves toward it, and slowly sits down on the stretcher.

He looks like he’s having trouble getting comfortable, so Jade rushes up to her room in search of blankets. She grabs some old clothes as well, a pair of cargo shorts and a t-shirt with a faded blue star on it. When she returns with her generous armful of fabric, the alien is back at the table, poking at the parts from his ship. She drops the blankets onto the stretcher and gives him a Look. “I told you to rest,” she says sternly. “You’re not resting, you’re fiddling.”

He looks up at her briefly. “Don’t have a... fiddle.”

She blinks. “What?”

“The…” He frowns, irritated. “Wood, strings, makes noise. Don’t have one, can’t ‘fiddle.’” He grumbles something in a language she doesn’t understand and continues poking.

She makes a mental note to cut back on homonyms - that’s going to be an adventure - and resists the urge to facepalm. “I meant you’re poking around in your stuff. I can see you struggling to stay standing, you can look at all that later.”

He ignores her, and instead holds out what looks like a keyboard. It’s half-melted and charred pretty severely, and Jade remembers barely being able to distinguish it from the ship’s plating surrounding it. “Ruined,” he says, giving her an accusatory glare.

“I didn’t set it on fire,” she says defensively. “I put out the fires! _And_ , now that I think about it, I saved your life. You’re _welcome_.”

He gives her a blank look, and she sighs. “Okay, first of all, I put out all the fires in and around your ship, then I bandaged you up and started working on your burns, but those are still a work in progress.” She gestures to her own arms as an example, and he looks at his own arms and seems mildly surprised by the injuries there. “You would have died from blood loss without me. _You’re welcome._ ”

The alien puts the keyboard-looking thing back onto the table, looking suitably placated, and Jade points imperiously toward the pile of blankets. He takes in the pile and looks back at her, alarmed. “I - No. No. No… _piles_.”

He says it with such intensity that Jade takes half a step back. What is even his deal? “Okaaaay,” she says. She kicks away the blankets. “There, no pile. I just thought you’d be more comfortable if you had blankets to sleep on.” She waits to start walking away before she rolls her eyes, but then she remembers there’s still something else she needs to do. “Oh, hey, I hope you don’t mind, not that you really have too much of a choice, but I need to change your bandages again.” She turns on her heel and pulls the fresh gauze and tape out of the first aid kit, pointing with her free hand at the now-blanketless stretcher. “Sit.”

He looks confused as all hell, but slowly lowers himself onto the stretcher. Jade plops herself down facing him and reaches for his chest. He shies back, yelling something in that other language. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he settles down and just says “ _No_ .” Jade has a distinct feeling he’d have prefaced it with an emphatic _fuck_ if he knew the word.

Jade sighs. “Look, I have to change them or they’ll get infected, which is no fun at all.” She reaches forward again, but he slaps her arm away. Jade grinds her teeth and decides to try another approach. She opens up her laptop and image searches “infected cut.” She grimaces - oh god that’s awful and disgusting - and turns it around so he can see. He leans forward before recoiling a second later with what Jade is sure is some choice swearing. She really needs to teach him some English ones. And more English in general. Or maybe she’ll ask him to teach her his language, that could be fun.

She holds up the fresh gauze and tape again, and points to the old ones on the alien’s chest. “You want that to happen to you? Let me at ‘em.”

He seems to get the idea, because he doesn’t resist when she reaches forward again and starts peeling off the bandages. His wounds have all but stopped bleeding, which is a good sign. She was worried the tussle just now might have set them off again, but they look fine. The biggest issue now is going to be keeping him still long enough for them to heal. She efficiently tapes the new gauze in place, then grabs his arm to check on the burns there. The blisters still haven’t popped, but she might as well put some aloe on it to cool the skin down. She leans over as far as she can to dig in the first aid kit for the gel, and pulls it out. He tries to pull away again, but she keeps a tight grip on his arm as she wrestles the jar open one-handed. She shoves it into his other hand, scoops out some of the green goop, and starts slathering it onto his arm.

He yelps and squirms, and Jade almost starts laughing. “Yeah, it’s cold, hold still or I might miss and hit your face.” She continues slathering, being gentle around the blisters, eventually working her way up to the burns around his neck and shoulders. He flinches each time she covers a new area, but she can see his posture relax as the soothing aloe does its job. “Okay, keep this elevated,” she says, waving around his arm and holding it above his head to demonstrate. “That’ll help with any swelling that starts up. And _rest_ , don’t just wander around poking at your stuff.”

He gives her a long look before standing up and walking straight to the table.

“What did I _JUST_ say!?”

He picks a heavy-looking box from the heap of alien technology and opens it, staring her down. He pulls out something brick-shaped and wrapped in plastic, unwraps it, and takes a bite.

Jade’s frustration fades, and she feels a bit silly. “Oh. You were just hungry.”

He nods, and Jade is sure the gesture is full of smugness. She stands, scoops up the clothes and holds them out to him. “Here,” she says. “Since whatever you’re wearing now is all torn up.”

He takes them, but doesn’t move to put them on. Jade shuffles her feet awkwardly in the silence. “No looking,” the alien finally says irritably.

“Oh! Right.” Jade turns around so the alien can change into the clothes. It’s not long before the rustling of fabric becomes the sound of pieces of metal falling onto each other, and she groans. Sure enough, when she turns around he’s gone back to the ship parts on the table. He’s a lot smaller than she thought he was; even her clothes from years ago are too big for him.

She looks down at the stretcher and frowns. There’s got to be a way to make him more comfortable, so he’ll actually lie down…

She suddenly remembers the couches in the grand foyer, and wants to hit herself. She scoops up the blankets and scrambles to her feet. “Follow me!” she says, and runs full speed out of the kitchen. She makes her way through the old globe-filled foyer and drops the blankets onto what she knows is the softer of the two couches. She’s folded up the first and is almost done with the second by the time the alien follows her in, giving the globes a wide berth.

She indicates that he should sit down and he does, still looking at the globes. “Real looks better,” he says.

“What?” Jade asks. “Oh - Earth does? From space?”

He nods, looking up at her. “Earth?”

Jade sits on the other couch across from him. “Yup! That’s what this planet’s called. I bet it’s really pretty from up there.”

“Yes.” Aw, he looks so proud at getting the hang of basic affirmations. It’s so cute, Jade wants to hug him. Well, he’s either proud, or smug that he’s seen Earth from space and she hasn’t.

“What about yours?”

“The name?”

“Yeah, what do you call your planet?”

He stares at the floor for a while, maybe trying to translate the name. “Alternia?”

“Is it anything like Earth?”

He shakes his head.

Jade picks at a loose thread on her couch. She has _so_ many questions about his planet, but he looks like he’s getting tired. Just one more, then. “What about you?”

“What.”

“What’s your name?”

He hesitates, and Jade just wants to grab him by the shoulders and say _just tell me, I saved your life dammit!_ Instead, she wraps loose couch threads around her fingers and waits for him to talk.

“Karkat.”

She looks back up at him. The name fits him. It’s got sharp edges but the middle sounds softer, and he is definitely squishy in the middle.

“I’m Jade,” she says, and holds out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

He doesn’t take her hand right away, so she wiggles it a little until he gets the idea, and she gives his hand a firm shake. “Nice-to-meet-you?” he repeats.

“It’s what you say when someone introduces themselves to you,” she explains. “Usually you say it and shake their hand.”

He makes a face. “Weird.”

“You’re weird,” Jade retorts.

“No, _you_.” He says it with such intensity that Jade giggles.

“Okay, well, just lay down here and keep getting that rest, okay?” she says. When he looks confused, she stretches out on her couch to demonstrate. “Like this, and then you just close your eyes and sleep.” He mimics her, and she gets up, satisfied. “If you need me, I’ll just be back in that other room getting some food.” She leaves him to restlessly fidget on the couch, and hopes he actually will get some sleep.

Her mind races as she cuts up an apple. She just made so much progress! Personally _and_ on a planetary level! She is having conversations with an actual alien! Pretty limited conversation, sure, and she’ll have to ask him later how he even knows as much English as he does, but still!!!

“Grandpa, you got all that, right?” she asks to the empty air.

She hears the hum of her laptop as various programs start up. “I can store that last conversation for later review, if you like.”

“Yes, please.”

Jade grins to herself. John is absolutely going to flip his shit when she tells him about this.

* * *

GT: hoooooly shiiiiiiiiit.  
GT: i am completely flipping my shit right now.  
GG: its incredible!!!!!!  
TG: youre living his dream jade  
TG: john are you jealous  
GT: i am SO jealous.  
GT: tell me everything!!!  
TT: What did he sound like?  
GG: um…  
GG: like a person??  
GG: he yells a lot, thats for sure  
TG: how does he even know english though thats what i want to know  
TG: how long has he been stalking humanity  
GG: i dont know!  
GG: ill probably ask him later but i dont want to push him or overly freak him out  
TT: He’s been receptive to your medical administrations then?  
GG: kiiiiind of  
GG: i had to manhandle him a little with the aloe gel but i think for the most part he understands that im trying to help him!  
GG: and im really impressed that he knows as much as he does!  
GG: english is a pretty complicated language to learn :/  
TG: what since when  
TG: english is the best language and definitely not governed by contradictory and arbitrary rules at all  
TT: What does his mental state seem like?  
TG: wait are you psychoanalyzing the alien by proxy right now  
TG: jesus rose let him stop dying at least  
TT: I’m just curious. Intense stress can often have physical effects, and hamper healing of existing injuries.  
GG: when he first woke up he seemed really scared and angry  
GG: he actually attacked me and put up a pretty good fight  
GG: but he doesnt have a rifle like i do :D  
GT: you didn’t shoot him, did you?  
GG: of course not! i just pointed it at him and he backed down  
GG: and he seems pretty frustrated about not being able to move around much  
GG: but im enforcing rest and relaxation with an iron fist!!! :P  
GT: hahaha. nobody messes with doctor jade.  
GG: hes mostly calmed down and i have him on the couch in the foyer now  
GG: im hoping hell actually listen to me and sleep because he lost a lot of blood in the crash and i dont want him reopening those wounds  
TT: Iron-rich foods are good for red blood cell regeneration.  
GT: if his blood is close enough to ours for that to even work.  
GT: is it?  
GG: it seems to be! i compared it with mine and it at least has platelets so i was able to stop the bleeding pretty easily  
GG: he apparently has his own food, he ate some earlier  
GG: its like a solid block of food-ish stuff? it looks pretty gross but he ate it!  
GT: weird.  
TG: i should go otherwise im gonna be a zombie at teen prison tomorrow  
GT: sleep well dave!  
TT: See you tomorrow.  
GG: bye dave!!!  
TT: Now is when we talk shit about him, right?  
GT: yeah, what an asshole, dave is the worst.  
GG: the woooooorst!  
TT: His unlikeability is insurmountable.  
GG: well im gonna go make another trip out to the ship  
GG: for such a small thing there sure is a lot of interesting stuff in it!  
GT: i can’t believe you have been going back and forth through the jungle all day.  
TT: And fulfilling your Doctor Jade duties at the same time.  
GT: don’t forget you need sleep too.  
GG: i know!!!  
GG: im just so excited! and theres still so much to do  
GG: i think if i tried to sleep right now i wouldnt be able to  
TT: Just take care of yourself. You know your limits better than we do.  
GG: i will, i promise!

* * *

Rose opens her laptop for a third time and checks Pesterchum again for the fifth. There’s still no sign of anyone being online. She’s not sure what she expected, considering her friends’ time zones relative to her own. It’s late enough to arguably be classified as early morning, so John and Dave are certainly asleep, and Jade seems to still be out salvaging. She sighs and debates the utility of scouring the internet for a new show to lambaste with John later.

A door slams elsewhere in the house - her mother is home, and she sounds rather agitated. Lovely.

Rose closes her laptop and slides out of bed, regrettably disturbing her cat, Jaspers, in the process. He gives a disgruntled _mrrp_ and immediately curls back into a furry ball. Rose gives the old cat a gentle pat and head rub before moving on. Time to go determine the cause of her mother’s distress.

She eases open her door, peering into the hallway. Light is spilling from downstairs, but as of yet there is no sign of her mother. She makes her way toward the stairs, avoiding the spots on the floor that she knows will creak and reveal her presence, but the sound of her mother’s voice from the master bedroom makes her pause. She tiptoes over to the door and presses her ear to the wood, and is just barely able to make out one half of a hushed conversation.

“- actually found the landing site? It’s where now?” Her mother chuckles quietly. “Of all places, it ends up there. Yes, send a team out. Get a seaplane, that’ll get you there fastest. Yes, I know they’re expensive, but this is the biggest piece of new information we’ve had in years. We have to retrieve whatever fell before anyone else does. Yes, Rosie’s just lovely, you’ll _never_ guess what she did last week.” Her mother launches into a minutes-long ramble, and Rose pulls away from the door. Seems like her mother brought some work home with her.

Rose retreats back down the hallway. Her foot comes down in the wrong spot and the floor creaks, sounding deafeningly loud. Her mother’s voice stops, and she opens her bedroom door to see Rose standing frozen in the hallway.

“Oh no, honey, did I wake you up?” she asks, coming out into the hallway.

Rose shakes her head. “No, I was already up. I heard a door slam and wondered if something was wrong.”

Her mother sighs. “It’s been a stressful day. Something we weren’t expecting happened at work, and now we’re all scrambling to recover from that.” She reaches out, presumably to pull Rose into a hug.

Rose neatly steps away, toward the stairs. “Have you just gotten home? I can reheat some dinner for you,” she offers.

Her mother smiles. “If you don’t mind,” she says. “That would be just lovely.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Rose says, and she descends the stairs to the kitchen. She moves the covered leftovers of her own dinner a few hours ago from the refrigerator to the microwave, and puts a kettle of water on the stove. As she waits for her two projects, she glances over into the living room. Her mother is surreptitiously sliding a small laptop into her purse, and Rose narrows her eyes.

Rose pours tea for the two of them as her mother eats, adding milk and sugar to her mother’s and honey and lemon to her own. “Mmm, thank you, Rosie,” her mother murmurs. “How’ve you been?”

“Quite well,” Rose says. She takes her tea and retreats up the stairs, casting one last glance toward her mother’s purse.

In her bedroom, she grips her mug until her fingers burn from the hot tea. What could have fallen from the sky, and where, that would motivate her mother to order someone to acquire a seaplane in order to collect? Jade’s island? The alien?

Rose scoops up Jaspers and holds him to her chest. He starts purring immediately; he always was a glutton for affection.

She’ll have to learn more about this somehow.

* * *

Karkat doesn’t remember the dream that jolts him awake, but he can’t think of any other reason he would wake up halfway into a defensive crouch with a snarl in his throat. And of course the snack mineral rubbed into his gaping wound (both proverbial and literal) is the fact that his feet get tangled up in the snuggleplane making up the bulk of this pathetic excuse for a pile, so that instead of actually landing on his feet (hands out trying to hold sickles he’d forgotten he didn’t even have anymore) he teeters precariously on the edge of the lounge plateau before falling ungracefully face-first onto the floor.

Ignoring the fresh surges of pain just about everywhere, Karkat rolls over and stares up at the ceiling of the block. Maybe if he just stays here he’ll sink through the floor and into the ground, wouldn’t that be nice. Better than being trapped in some too-bright, overly cluttered hive with a chatty alien who seems dead set on trampling through his personal space with all the subtlety of a rampaging trunkbeast.

_You’re being ridiculous_ , says a voice in his head that sounds a lot like Kanaya. _She saved your life._ Personally, on the list of things worth being saved, his life is probably somewhere near the bottom. It’s not like he’s done much other than dick around and paint a target on the backs of everyone he knows.

He sits up slowly, twisting a little - fuck, that hurts - to avoid one of the many navigation spheres he’s apparently sharing the block with. It’s labeled, not that that helps him much since literally everything is in a language he can barely read or understand. The letters are all either too round or too straight, and what grammar he’s even been able to digest has been either too simple or complex and contradictory.

He untangles his legs from the stupid snuggleplane and throws it up onto the lounge plateau. Judging by the lighting in the room, it’s probably a little before nightfall. Maybe he should just leave and go die in the woods somewhere, save the alien - _Jade,_ the Kanaya-voice in his head whispers - the trouble of disposing of his corpse.

He stands up, and strongly considers just walking out the door. Instead he enters the meal preparation block and digs around in the debris from his ship for the nutrition slab he had started on earlier. At least Jade had blindly grabbed the rations, as much as he hated the idea of her digging around in the ship; otherwise he’d just have to guess what was even edible from the Earth food in the meal preparation block.

She clearly doesn’t know what’s important and what’s just random junk, because the bulk of his control console is nowhere in the pile of scrap. She hasn’t found the warp core either - or she has, and she knows it’s important and is hiding it from him. Or it had been smashed to bits in the crash, but he seriously doubts that. She probably _has_ hidden it somewhere.

He goes back to the entrance block and wanders around aimlessly. Instead of a secret cache, he finds a smaller block with a tightly spiraling staircase around a small, round platform with a complex geometric scribble on it. Maybe it’s Jade’s symbol; he remembers seeing another vague scribble on the shirt she had been wearing, though whether it’s the same one is anyone’s guess. It’s not like he was paying much attention at the time.

Karkat ignores the platform and ascends the stairs.

* * *

Jade brings her next haul inside through the back door, in case Karkat is actually asleep. She doubts he is, but better safe than sorry. “I’m going to have to figure out a better place to put all of this,” she mutters to herself as she adds the cart’s contents to the growing stack of Alternian technology.

“My dear, there appears to be an altercation brewing in the grand foyer,” says her Grandpa from the laptop. “Escalation to fisticuffs may be rather imminent.”

Jade gasps. “Karkat!”

She sprints into the foyer, skidding to a halt mere inches from one of the globes. Karkat is perched on the arm of the couch, locked in an intense staredown with Bec. They look oddly identical - both have their teeth bared, and Jade is pretty sure Bec isn’t the only one growling. “Bec, _no!_ ” she yells. “He’s a _friend_ , you hear me? _Friend._ ”

She strides forward and bops Becquerel sharply on the nose. The dog yelps in surprise before shaking his head and huffing. Karkat stiffens on the arm of the couch as Bec pokes his head forward, sniffing intently. Maybe he doesn’t recognize Karkat because he’s awake? Jade frowns; Bec should be smarter than that. “Don’t be silly, you know who this is. Say sorry.”

Becquerel whines softly, and with a quick wag of his tail he puts his paws up on the couch and licks Karkat’s arm. Karkat promptly shrieks and shoots backward off his perch and onto the floor. Bec makes his way around the couch and regards the fallen alien curiously. When he leans down to sniff at him, Karkat scrambles away, ranting in his own language. Alternian? She’ll have to ask him about that when he’s done flipping his shit. Bec sits as Karkat’s volume increases, turning his head from side to side.

Jade sighs. “He’s not going to hurt you, Karkat,” she says. “He freaked out because he didn’t recognize you, but he knows you’re okay now.”

Karkat spends at least another minute rambling before he says anything Jade can actually (somewhat) understand. “Get your" - there's a string of the other language - "away from me.”

“Bec,” Jade says, and Becquerel immediately comes over to her, looking up at her expectantly. “Go upstairs, boy.” She gives him a gentle head-scritch, and he shoves his nose into her leg before turning and bounding away, hitting her leg with his tail as he leaves. To his credit, he doesn’t even look in Karkat’s direction, though Karkat still watches him go warily.

“I am so sorry, Karkat,” Jade tells him. “I had no idea he’d be hostile like that, he was around you while you were unconscious-”

Another string of words she doesn't understand - "it almost _mauled_ me!”

“ _He_ is my _dog_ , and he did not! He’s normally very nice!” she retorts. “It’s not his fault something you did upset him!”

“Upset _it_!?”

“Yes, you did! He’s not even like that around strangers! What did you do?”

“Nothing!”

Jade advances on Karkat and shoves her finger into his chest, not noticing him flinch when she does. “What. Did. You. _Do!?_ ” she demands, poking him with every word.

He pushes her away from him, rubbing at his chest. “Nothing! Found a..." He says a couple more things she doesn't understand, looking frustrated. "A, a plant-growing block -”

Block. A Room? “You went into the greenhouse!?”

“- and a container fell over, scooped up the dirt and came back here and then _it_ was about to [rip out my goddamn] - assault me!”

“So he clearly thought you knocked the pot over! You shouldn’t have even been in there!”

“Not my fault! Is the only place I’m allowed to be the - the _that_?” He points at the couch.

“The couch,” Jade tells him, before she remembers she’s supposed to be mad at him. “For now it is! Don’t try and pretend you’re not still hurt, because I sure as hell haven’t forgotten!” She raises her arm to poke him for emphasis again and he grabs her wrist.

“No _poking_.”

Jade looks down, trying not to think about how much like the growling earlier his voice sounds, and she notices the bandages. _Shit_. She tries to pull her hand away, but Karkat’s grip is like a vice. “Karkat,” she says, matching his flat tone, “let go of my hand.”

He stares her down for what feels like hours. When he finally lets go, Jade remains still for a few seconds before turning and walking purposefully out of the foyer. “The couch is bad!” he yells after her. “It’s bad and dumb!” She doesn’t say anything back; not even when she hears a much longer string of Alternian, or the crash of something fragile falling over. She just keeps marching toward the staircase transportalizer.

It’s not until she’s in her bedroom that she lets the tears welling up in the corners of her eyes spill over, lets out the shaky breaths she had been keeping steady. She pushes her palms into her eyes until the stars start swirling on the insides of her eyelids. She rubs them away and hugs her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth slightly. Bec jumps up onto the bed next to her and boops her cheek gently with his nose. She buries her face in his fur and pulls him down until they’re laying side by side.

* * *

GG: he honestly kind of scares me  
GG: i was so used to him being unconscious and then he woke up and he moves weird  
GG: and hes really angry about a lot of things  
TG: well it makes sense hes stuck somewhere totally new and hes all alone and some weird alien is poking him where it hurts  
GG: i thought you were supposed to be on my side!!  
TG: im on the side of understanding hes hella vulnerable right now  
TG: dont get me wrong youre in charge there but like  
TG: imagine youre rehabilitating a tiger or something  
TG: only the tiger is sentient and also from a planet off fuck knows where in the universe  
TG: anyones gonna be snappy if theyre injured and keep getting fucked with  
TG: even if said fucking is with good intentions  
GG: hehehe ;D  
TG: even humans  
TG: oh ha ha very funny  
TG: im not the one doing the alien fucking  
GG: DAVE!!!  
TG: you started it  
GG: you said it  
TG: i say a lot of things  
TG: most of them incredibly compromising out of context  
TG: and in context usually  
TG: i just kind of roll with it  
TG: my point is theres gonna be a lot of lashing out  
TG: like remember that one time i accidentally skewered that bird  
GG: yeah  
GG: poor thing D:  
TG: that bird was a feathery piece of shit  
TG: kept trying to fly around when its wing was bandaged and knocking shit over  
TG: and then trying to straight up murder me when i went to feed it  
GG: because you stabbed it  
TG: anyway imagine the aliens like that bird  
TG: hes gonna want to do reckless shit that isnt gonna help him  
GG: yeah :/  
TG: you just need to put your foot down and try to minimize any damage he can do  
TG: like take away anything pointy in the area so he cant shank you with it  
GG: i told you he bit me right  
TG: what no  
TG: holy shit  
TG: when did that happen  
TG: are you gonna get alien rabies  
TG: are you gonna turn into a were-alien  
GG: no, dave, i am not going to turn into a were-alien  
GG: and i am pretty sure i dont have alien rabies!  
TG: thats exactly what someone with alien rabies would say  
TG: or someone turning into a were-alien   
GG: you know for a moment there you were being really insightful  
GG: almost like rose  
TG: and that is exactly why i stopped  
TG: im already 85 percent sure were related somehow i dont need to talk like her too  
GG: so instead you started talking about alien rabies  
GG: which i dont even think are a thing!  
GG: i am calling bullshit on your alien rabies sir!!  
TG: diseases arent exclusive to earth things  
TG: for all you know he could have like five different fatal diseases and you just got all of them  
GG: im not discounting the possibility of alien bacteria but it is HIGHLY unlikely that it will affect me at all  
TG: okay whatever youre the scientist here  
TG: oh hey  
TG: what does his alien language sound like  
TG: do you know if theres more than one because its pretty fucking presumptuous to assume an entire alien race only has one language when humans have somewhere in the quadruple digits  
GG: its kind of hard to describe?  
GG: and no i dont know  
GG: ive barely talked to him other than to yell at him really  
GG: and i havent talked to him at all since the time we were just talking about  
GG: are there really that many different languages?  
TG: somewhere between seven and eight thousand yeah  
TG: and they dont even know how many more that arent spoken anymore  
TG: can you send me a file of him talking or something  
TG: i wanna hear this  
GG: yeah that shouldnt be too hard!  
GG: let me go make breakfast and check on him  
GG: hopefully he and bec havent killed each other…   
TG: haha good luck

gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead

Jade’s first hint that he’s awake is the sound of voices. Not Karkat, and not just one. It almost sounds like a recording.

She pokes her head tentatively into the foyer. He’s nowhere to be found, and she frowns. She is going to make him rest if she has to nail him to the floor!

She follows the sound into the kitchen, and the first thing she notices is that her lovely pile of alien technology has once again been partially strewn across the floor. The second thing she notices is that Karkat is perched on her counter, with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring intently at the movie currently playing on the small TV. Well… at least he seems occupied enough to stay still.

She steps carefully around the mess on the floor and puts a pan on the stove. She can feel his eyes on her as she digs around in the refrigerator for eggs, but continues to ignore him.

He starts talking in Alternian as she turns on the stove and cracks the eggs into her pan, undoubtedly saying things about how she’s horrible and weird and holding him prisoner. All things she can’t really deny at the moment. She doesn’t look over at him, but she does listen carefully so she can try to describe what the language sounds like to Dave. It’s harder than she thought it would be, but then again linguistics isn’t her strong suit.

She scoops the eggs out of the pan and into a bowl and retreats back upstairs, feeling his gaze burn into her as she leaves the kitchen.

* * *

Rose’s mother’s office is empty for most of the day, so the issue isn’t getting in; it’s getting in while she’s not there, but her purse is. And that only happens for half an hour every day, when she showers. So, as soon as she hears the water start running, Rose creeps into the office and slips the small laptop out of her mother’s purse.

It’s password-protected, which makes Rose pause. She could waste valuable time trying to guess the password. She’s about to start when she notices the option to use a PIN number instead; it’s faster to type, a tempting advantage for her mother, but it’s also easier to guess. She types in the numbers of her birthday, 1204, and sure enough, she’s allowed access into the laptop. She goes straight to her mother’s email, skimming the subject lines until she finds one that seems relevant.

The Pesterchum app on her phone chimes, and she opens it to see a message from Jade.

gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]

GG: can you give me some advice on something?  
TT: Now’s not exactly the best time.  
GG: i think i might have ruined everything!!!  


Rose grimaces. She can’t exactly leave her friend in the lurch like this.

TT: Okay. Start describing your situation, and I’ll be with you shortly.  


She opens the ten most recent emails her mother received and takes pictures of the contents. She doesn’t intend to read them now but she does catch a few keywords, which are more than enough to confirm her suspicions: “extra-terrestrial,” “island,” and “Harley.” With her information gathered, she shuts down the laptop and carefully lowers it back into the purse, and slips out of her mother’s office just as she hears the water shut off.

Back in her room, she opens her own laptop and begins reading through Jade’s messages.

GG: so karkat doesnt want to stay still at all which is annoying because he needs rest for everything to heal properly!!  
GG: last night he got in some kind of confrontation with bec because he was wandering around and knocked some things over in the greenhouse  
GG: and i got upset because a) hes supposed to be not moving!!!!!  
GG: and b) i really dont want him getting into all of my and my grandpas things  
GG: he could have broken something really valuable  
GG: and i yelled at him but i got carried away and started pushing at him and poking his chest  
GG: and then he got REALLY scary and grabbed my hand  
GG: and i know most of the problem is me because i guess he just needs things to occupy him which i dont blame him for AT ALL  
GG: but now i think he might hate me and i dont know what to do D:  
GG: …  
GG: rose???  
TT: My apologies. I did say I was preoccupied with other business.  
TT: Karkat is the alien?  
GG: yeah!!!  
TT: I see.  
TT: It’s very possible that was merely a one-time aggression. He seems to understand that you’re attempting to care for him, yes?  
GG: i think so…  
GG: i went into the kitchen this morning and he was in there but he didnt do anything except talk  
TT: Did he say anything interesting?  
GG: i dont know it was in his own language  
GG: it sounded really mean though  
TT: Well, you did hurt him.  
GG: yeah :(  
GG: i talked to dave and he said i just needed to put my foot down about what he can and cant do  
GG: and that hes in a very vulnerable place right now so lashing out isnt unusual  
TT: Dave said that? I’m impressed. That’s quite emotionally mature of him.  
GG: thats what i said!  
GG: i know i need to make it up to karkat but im just scared he wont listen to me or trust me anymore :(  
TT: The most you can do now is try.  
TT: If he’s mobile, you might as well just take him with you on your trips to his ship.  
TT: You may earn his favor back by letting him roam around, and you’ll be able to keep an eye on him to boot.  
GG: thats a great idea!!!  
GG: ill have to figure out how to keep bec occupied somewhere else though since karkat doesnt like him...  
TT: I’m sure you’ll think of something.  
GG: yeah  
GG: oh hey! what were you doing earlier?  
TT: Investigating.  
GG: oooooooh, sounds mysterious!!!  
GG: anything interesting?  
TT: Nothing yet. I was unable to peruse any of the information I had gathered.  
GG: sorry :(  
TT: That’s quite alright. I can inform you of anything I do discover, if you like.  
GG: yeah!!!  
GG: id better go check on him  
TT: Good luck.

gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]

Jade ventures back down into the kitchen, dirtied bowl in hand. Karkat is still sitting in front of the television, but this time he doesn’t look over at her when she enters. She puts her bowl in the sink and puts her hands on her hips, steeling herself.

“Hey,” she says. His ears twitch at the sound, but otherwise he ignores her. She continues, a little louder: “I’m going back out to your ship. I want you to come with me.”

That gets his attention, and he whips his head around - too far, that’s too far, necks should _not_ twist like that. Jade swallows to keep her breakfast down. “What,” he says flatly.

“I want you to come with me out to your ship,” she repeats. “Since you’re bored enough to wander around here, and I figure you would know what’s important better than me -”

He’s climbing down from the counter before she can even finish her thought, and he pushes past her out of the kitchen.

“Hey, you still have to be careful!” She follows him out, pushing the old debris off the cart and pulling it along with her. She catches up to him just outside the front door, where he’s squinting out at the island with one hand over his face. Noting his pained expression, she ducks back inside and returns with an enormous floppy hat.

When she puts it on his head, he yelps and flinches away, reaching up to his head. When his hands come back down clutching the hat, he calms down enough to just look irritated. “What.”

“It’ll protect your eyes from the sun!”

He glares at the hat for a few moments before lifting it back up to his head. His horns seem to give him trouble with putting it on, and Jade resists the urge to get up in his space and help him with it.

She stifles a giggle. He looks ridiculous, but also less like the sunlight is physically paining him - which, for all she knows, maybe it was. It’s possible his planet has a weaker sun than Earth does. She makes a mental note to ask him about that later, if he stops possibly hating her.

After about a half an hour of walking, Jade notices Karkat lagging behind. “Are you okay?” she asks.

He glares at her. “Fine.”

“We’re about halfway there, do you need to take a break?”

“No.”

Jade stops and puts her hands on her hips. “You fell out of the sky less than a week ago, don’t try and tell me you’re not tired!”

Karkat looks like he’s about to argue before he deflates and sags against a tree. Jade pulls a water bottle from the undercarriage of the cart and hands it to him. “It’s important to stay hydrated in a tropical climate.”

He takes it and drinks in large gulps, and Jade feels a surge of relief. He must have been really thirsty if he’s drinking that fast. She’s lucky she noticed before he collapsed or something.

“Hey,” she says softly. He stops drinking and looks at her. “How much of what I’m saying do you actually understand?”

He hesitates. “Some,” he eventually says. “Fast.”

“I talk too fast?” Jade asks. When he nods, she says, “Do you want me to slow down?”

He shrugs. Jade makes a mental note to talk slower anyway. Comprehension is key.

“What are you,” he asks flatly.

“As in, my species?”

He stares at her, probably trying to mentally translate what she means by “species.” She amuses herself while she waits by imagining a loading bar slowly filling up above his head.

“What are you,” he eventually repeats. “Species.”

“We’re called humans.”

He huffs. “Stupid.”

“Stupid?”

“Earth, but humans. Doesn’t match.”

Oh. That makes a lot of sense, actually. That probably means he’s Alternian, if his planet is Alternia and he thinks sentient species and planet are supposed to match. “I guess you could also say ‘terran’, since ‘terra’ is another word for earth,” she says.

“Why not that then.”

She grins at him. “’Cause we’re stupid.”

There’s that confused stare again. She half-expects him to start calling her more mean names, but instead he says, “Go now?”

“Sure,” she says, and starts pushing the cart forward again. “But if you start getting tired, tell me, okay? I don’t want you to collapse out here because you think you can’t show weakness or something.”

He doesn’t say anything at that, just starts walking after her. It’s not a refusal, at least, so Jade supposes that will have to do for now.

* * *

His ship looks like a pile of trash.

Not that it hasn’t always been a heap of garbage held together by psionics and prayers, but at least it usually looked like a ship.

Karkat ignores Jade’s cry of alarm and slides down the slope of the crater. He comes to a hard stop against the ship’s hull, which creaks slightly at the impact. He follows the curve of the ship until he finds the hole, and remembers the imperial battleship - the others all yelling to scatter until their voices all blended into one panicked scream - the hit from the laser - the alarms blaring for everything from atmosphere loss to uncontrolled reentry -

There’s a hand on his shoulder. Karkat flinches away, rearing back to block any more grabs - it’s just Jade. She’s looking at him, and her eyes are too soft. “You don’t have to go in,” she says, and that’s too soft, too. “I don’t want to make you too stressed out.”

He grits his teeth and steps through the jagged hole in the hull. It’s almost worse on the inside - the delicate machinery is charred, and the indicator lights are dark for the first time in sweeps. He makes his way to the cockpit - ignoring the dent and old sweat stains left by Equius the only time he ever let that asshole on his ship, ignoring the remnants of graffiti left by either Nepeta or Terezi (there wasn’t enough paint left to tell the difference between the two types of manic scrawlings), and definitely ignoring the reminders those things gave him that he was probably never going to see any of them again.

The entrance to the cockpit is full of debris, because of course it is. There’s a vague path-shaped valley carved into it, probably from Jade or her demonic barkbeast. He gives the debris mountains a cursory glance - it all looks like it’s just random bits of metal and wires, not much use after a nosy alien probably took whatever they were connected to - and pushes onward. He’s completely unsurprised to find the cockpit just as much of a mess as the rest of the ship. It looks like Jade took more from here than everywhere else, probably because she’s at least smart enough to recognize it as a cockpit. He digs his hands into the gap where the computer used to be; she figured out what the screen and keyboard were, but completely missed the motherboard and processors. There’s an uncomfortable prickle of psionics as he pries those out - probably meant as a trap by Sollux in case anyone but him tried that without taking the proper precautions. It probably would have melted his thinkpan if it was still functional.

He stumbles backward when they finally come loose, and Jade catches him before he can make an even bigger fool of himself. “I can put those on the cart if you want,” she says, holding her hand out.

Karkat bites back his instinctive response of “no fuck you” before he can say it out loud. What does he think he’s going to do, carry everything he considers valuable back to Jade’s hive in his own two barely functioning arms? He puts the parts into her waiting hand and turns back to the rest of the console.

“Does everything use this kind of organic technology?” she asks.

“Yeah.” There’s nothing left that Karkat can make use of without the ship actually being functional, so he pushes past Jade out of the cockpit. She can get whatever else she wants out of the cockpit, it’s not like she can do anything with it. He passes the graffiti and the sweat stains again, and kicks scattered debris aside until he can make out the thin seam in the floor. Scanning the wall near the engine hatch, he presses a nearly invisible hand-sized panel into the wall and slides it aside to reveal the biometric scanner for the hatch. Jade goes _ooh_ behind him as he puts his hand on the scanner, which lights up blue as the engine hatch opens with a hiss.

Karkat drops into the engine, and glares at Jade when she follows him down. There was barely enough room for both him and Sollux down here, and Jade is a good deal bulkier than Sollux. At least she’s not in the way.

The tubes he knows are supposed to be full of propulsion slime and pulsing slightly are completely still. There’s something crusty beneath his feet, so he can guess where all the slime went. He shoves the tubes aside, trying to pick apart the tangled knots he distinctly remembers complaining about when he first saw them. In the center, though, is something he hadn’t dared to hope had survived the crash unscathed, and yet there it is, completely intact.

He detaches the warp core from the casing connecting it to the ship, and just kind of looks at it. He has no idea how it even works or how it was made, just that Sollux’s psionics could power it remotely. Except when they all left him for dead, apparently.

“What’s that?” Jade asks from behind him. The core is big enough that he needs to hold it in two hands, so instead of hiding it behind his back as he turns around, he has to just hug it to his chest.

“Nothing,” he says, and he stares her down, expecting her to argue. “It’s mine.”

She holds up her arms instead. “Okay. If it’s that important, you hold onto it. Have fun getting out of here while holding it.” She grabs onto the edges of the hatch and clambers up, her feet digging into the propulsion tubes for footholds. Karkat grimaces as an intact tube ruptures, oozing remnants of inert slime onto her shoe.

It takes some working, and some pathetic scrabbling, but Karkat manages to tuck the core under his weaker arm and climb out through the hatch one-handed. Jade is, thankfully, not around to see it, and he takes a few seconds to lie on the floor and catch his breath. He hears her footsteps approaching sooner than he’d like, so he pulls himself up into a position that _doesn’t_ look like he’s been gasping for breath on the floor like a wounded hoofbeast.

“Karkat? Did you get stuck? Oh, no, you’re fine,” she says, poking her head through the opening in the hull. “Is there anything else you want from here, or is it time to head back to the house?”

Okay, so it’s a “house” and not a hive. Weird. He shakes his head, standing up and ignoring the dizzying rush of blood into his thinkpan. “Go back,” he says.

“Okay! If you need to stop and rest on the way, just let me know!”

“Oh, sure, just tell the alien stranger I’m too weak to keep walking, what a brilliant fucking idea that won’t get me culled,” Karkat grumbles to himself in Alternian as he follows her out through the hole in the ship. He misses hearing his own fucking language from someone other than him.

**Author's Note:**

> holy shit formatting pesterlogs is literally hellish. i am so glad i never posted any of my homestuck fic. until now i guess


End file.
